FACT: Your Kid Will Be A Bigger Pussy Than You Are

W.A.T.C.H. is a non-profit organization that seeks to protect children by educating parents on the dangers lurking in many toys. I saw on the news that they had released their “Safe Fun In The Sun” pamphlet to help reduce injuries this summer, and the news made it out to be a pamphlet full of EXTREME! DANGER! I wanted to see just what is considered dangerous these days, so I tracked down the original pamphlet to find out what all the fuss was about.

I’m all for trying to make kids safer, but I have to wonder what the hell is going on in the world that creates a need for a pamphlet like this to be written at all. I grew up in the 70’s, and when I think of how people grew up in the 50’s, I feel like a total pussy. I’m sure that when those people think of people who grew up during the Great Depression, they feel like pussies. When I see a pamphlet like this, I don’t feel bad anymore because I know that as time goes on, each generation will churn out bigger and bigger pussies for old people to feel tougher than. Need proof? Check out some of the main points in the pamphlet and tell me that you don’t agree…

Point 1: Protective Gear Should Be Worn With Inline Skates, Scooters, And Skateboards
In the 70’s, we roller skated, rode around on six inch wide skateboards, and rode friggin’ big wheels downhill standing up, usually with the sole intention of crashing into each other. That was what we called a crash up derby. We had no helmets, we had no pads, and we never rode scooters because scooters were for pussies. Even though we smashed into each other in the middle of the street at the bottom of a hill, the most protective gear we had were Toughskins, and the knowledge that our parents would kill us if we ripped another pair of plaid pants.

Point 2: Kids Riding Bikes Must Wear Helmets
The second a kid gets near a bike these days, someone is ready to call Child Services unless the kid has a helmet on before they lay a single finger on the handlebars. When I was a kid and finally got a Huffy, I used it for two things: to jump off things like Evel Knievel, and get into smash up derbies like one of the The Malachi Brothers. If you messed up your jump off of a poorly constructed cinder block ramp, or were the unsuspecting victim of the Malachi Crunch, the only thing standing between you and a batch of city poured concrete was a ringer t-shirt and a mess of long hair, my friend. We didn’t wear helmets, because when I was a kid, helmets only served to help you tell which kids you weren’t allowed to make fun of. Everyone else learned to tuck and roll. Hell, not even professional hockey players wore helmets in those days, so why would we?Point 3: Dangerous Mini Bikes Are Marketed And Sold To Children
Wait, so you’re telling me that kids today can go out and buy their own mini motorcycles? Really? You know that awesome Huffy that I used to transform myself into Evel Knievel and the Malachi Brothers? Well, some thieving ass-wipes stole it right out of my garage, leaving me one less thing that I could use to hurl myself into stuff at high speeds. It wasn’t a Supergoose with a double gooseneck and a flywheel or anything. It was a banged up, old Huffy, and they stole it anyway. If you had some sort of mini-motorcycle in those days, the only thing that would get hurt would be your feelings when you heard it zipping away from your house late at night.

Point 4: Lead Can Cause Permanent, Irreversible Injuries
No shit. Really? Is that why we weren’t allowed to eat the paint chips off the wall 30 years ago? Do enough people still not know about this that it needs to be included in a safety pamphlet? If not, they probably should’ve mentioned that smoking causes cancer and you shoudn’t put Benadryl in the baby’s milk to get it to go to sleep. Maybe they can add these oversights into next year’s pamphlet, or agree to omit them and stop treating American parents like idiots.

Point 5: Toys With Small, Loose, Rigid, Or Pointy Parts Are Bad
Holy crap. With one line, they’ve pushed almost every toy that I or any of my friends had in the 70’s into the bad category. Hungry Hungry Hippos? Bad. Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, or Shogun toys that shot missiles? Bad. Green Army men? Bad. Operation? Wacky, but still bad. Trouble with the popomatic bubble? Well, that’s borderline, because although the popomatic protective bubble might prevent dice to eye injury, there are a lot of small parts that kids could choke on if they decided to eat them.

Know what my parents did if my sister tried to eat any of my awesome ’70s toys? They fished whatever it was out of her mouth and told her, “No”. It was called parenting. Shit. Every toy on the market back then was not only small, loose, rigid, and pointy, but I can think of one off the top of my head that added “flammable” to the mix to make things interesting.

I don’t know how it came into my possession, but I had a metal Batmobile that not only shot sparks out of the back, but shot a fucking blade out of the front. A sharp, metal knife blade popped out like a switchblade when you pressed a button on it. I’m completely serious. I thought it was the coolest toy ever, and 30 years later, here I am with all my fingers.

Hell, if you eliminate every toy that’s small, loose, rigid or pointy, what’s left on the market that’s fun to play with? Pillows? What if the pillow lands on top of the child, pinning them to the ground and suffocating them with its extreme weight? Maybe they can play with some reasonably sized foam blocks as long as the corners are shaved off and they’re used under strict adult supervision. Or maybe a feather, as long as they’re not allergic. Oh no, wait, a feather has a pointy end.

PuHUssies. Sorry. That was a cough.

Point 6: “Super” Water Guns Have Caused Eye And Other Injuries
When I was a kid, we didn’t have super water guns. The squirt guns that we got were cheap and shot a tiny stream of water at an angle until you gave up and drank the contents or smashed them over someone’s head. The only super squirt gun we had was called a hose. Does a super water gun have more force than a hose? What about those pressurized water rockets that you had to pump up and shoot into the air? I think I shot one of those things off a thousand times and never lost an eye.

Know why? Because my parents constantly asked us, “You want to lose an eye? Do you? Do. You Want. To. Lose. An. Eye?” Repeated enough times, that phrase creates a subconscious barrier that prevents kids from pointing projectiles at people’s faces. Thirty years later, I still don’t like pointing stuff at my eyes. And what “other” injuries is this pamphlet referring to? Has human skin has gotten so soft and supple that a super squirt gun poses a risk of breaking the surface? Or is it the whacking someone over the head with the squirt gun thing? Because, like I said, that has been going on since squirt guns were invented.

Point 7: Dive Sticks Could Potentially Impale Children
Are you fucking kidding me right now? Are you? You’re telling me that a colored sticks under several feet of water pose such a danger that parents need to be warned about them? Know how many dive sticks I’ve successfully retrieved in my day? 22,836. Know how many times anyone I knew was impaled by one? Uh, zero because you don’t dive straight down into the shallow end of a pool. In the 70’s we didn’t worry about impaling ourselves on dive sticks because we knew that if you dove hard enough into the shallow end of the pool that you could impale yourself on a dive stick, then dive stick or not, you’re pretty much fucked in the impending battle between your neck and the bottom of the pool.

You want to talk real impalement risk? I have two words for you: Lawn darts. Thirty years ago, horseshoes had been replaced by giant metal darts that drunken adults threw at plastic rings on the ground whenever there was a cookout. Do you have any idea how many drunken cookouts there were in the 70’s?

Money was tight and there was no gas to be had anywhere, so drunken cookouts were as popular as mustaches back then. Hell, if people did manage to find some gas, it was pretty common for them to drive drunk without seat belts when they could barely see the road through their long ass hair. To make matters worse, it wasn’t uncommon for drivers to use the phrase, “Hold the wheel” before diving from the front into the back seat in an attempt to kill an unruly child at 30 MPH. Does that seem like a world in which anyone thought that flying metal darts posed a danger?

Nope. And I never knew anyone that got impaled by one, even though us kids would chuck them into the air like rockets anytime no one was looking. I did hear a rumor about a kid getting hit with one once, but I also heard that Mikey the Life Cereal kid died when his stomach blew up from eating Pop Rocks and drinking Coke. In any case, if we were accustomed to dodging flying metal projectiles on a regular basis, small, stationary sticks under a few feet of water didn’t really register as something that we needed to worry about.

Know what we did worry about? The friggin’ Zim Zams that we pulled out of the ground and threw like javelins. You know what it’s like to get hit with one of those? Well, I can tell you firsthand that it sucks, but there was no other way to train like Bruce Jenner in those days. We didn’t have any real javelins laying around to practice with because we were too afraid to ask our parents for something that cost money that you couldn’t eat or wear. Yea, if your looking for impalement risk, give some kids a Zim Zam and tell them to go for the gold. And they’re worried about dive sticks? Pfft.

Point 8: Heelys Cause Injuries.
The only time I remember seeing something like Heelys in the ’70s was on an episode of CHiPs, where this chick walked into a jewelery store, stole some stuff, and click click popped some skate wheels out of her shoes to make the getaway. Otherwise, no regular person had Heelys when I was a kid, so maybe I shouldn’t even talk about this. Hold on. Wasn’t the 70’s the golden fucking age of roller skating? Yea, I think it must’ve been, because even a nerd like me couldn’t go a month without going to someone’s rollerskating birthday party.

It’s a different world today, though. According to the pamphlet, and I quote, “Retailers market Heelys to youths who are unprepared for the risks associated with this product.” It’s unconscionable that today’s unscrupulous marketing machine targets unprepared kids with their rolling mangling machines. In the ’70s, roller skates were marketed to adults who would attend a class on the risks of roller skates, which they would weigh and thoroughly explain to their children, if they decided to buy their kid a pair.

Wait, no they didn’t. Seventies parents got some second hand skates from someone who outgrew them, gave them to the kids, and sent them outside. If they were too big, we got some newspaper to stuff in the toes. If they were too small, you rode your bike into something instead. There was no class. No one “prepared us for the risks of skating”. You put wheels on your feet, and the closest you were going to get to padding was a kick ass head band and maybe a couple of wrist bands.

Even though you knew that you were going to end up on your ass in the first twelve seconds, you pointed yourself downhill anyway. Shit man. You want injuries? Try sliding down the street on your belly, crashing through thorn bushes, and jamming into large, unforgivable ’70s cars because the brakes on the old skates inexplicably required you to lean forward to stop. Heelys? Danger? Really? Wait, are the kids using them to rob jewelery stores? No?

PuHUssies. Sorry. There’s that cough again.

From There, It Just Gets Worse…
I really wish that I was kidding when I said that “Never burn charcoal inside” is a direct quote from this pamphlet. It also says to beware of gas leaks, watch your kids near the pool, and don’t let your kid touch the fire. It finishes up by pointing out the dangers of mini-hammocks, trampolines, soccer goals, amusement park rides, bleachers, sweatshirt drawstrings (really?), jungle gyms, and windows.

I really think that the inclusion of most of the items in the pamphlet confirms that this group thinks that American parents are severely mentally handicapped, or that children need protection from nearly everything. Like me, most of the kids of the 70’s didn’t have protections like this, and we turned out fine. I still have all my fingers and a working brain, despite a number of scars and a lot of lumps.

Do we need pamphlets like this because each generation is churning out bigger and bigger pussies, or is it just another piece of garbage designed to perpetuate itself by creating fear and concern in every possible aspect of a child’s life?

25 thoughts on “FACT: Your Kid Will Be A Bigger Pussy Than You Are”

Rode cousin’s bike with no brakes down hill into traffic? Check. Built own treehouse out of scrapwood we scrounged from dangerous empty lots? Check. Had toys that melted plastic goo with hot metal rods so we could make them into Creepy Crawlies, and discovered that MANY other things could be melted as well? Check. Wood burning kits that could be used to give Barbie ritual scars? Check.

Maybe “dangerous” toys and activities should be encouraged as a way of culling the herd. And if you take away all this stuff, kids will FIND a way to make innocuous toys dangerous. We turned Tinker Toys into cannons that actually shot stuff, and my beloved Grandpa taught me how to make stink bombs using common kitchen items.

We should probably do what my husband often suggests be done with unruly kids- seal them in a barrel full of soapy water with their head sticking out the top until they graduate from college.

We never wore helmets or a suit of armor either. The one bicycle related injury I remember was my sister falling off her bike and cutting her chin. The way that bike helmets strap on would not have prevented her from needing 6 stitches.

The only bicycle injury I remember getting as a kid is when I got my two-wheel bike and had to learn how to ride it on the gravel roundabout at the campground where we were camping during my b-day! Once we picked all the gravel out of my knees, we ran off to throw the lawn darts (jarts?) willy-nilly.

I melted Barbie’s head in my easybake oven (that was a hand-me down from my sisters…the oven and the Barbie).

Whiffle Ball bats? When the boys picked on me, I just cracked them across the back of the knees with that innocuous piece of plastic—plastic stings my friends, STINGS!

Don’t even get me going on blowing up the fishies with m-80s and 1/4 sticks of explosive procured from somewhere…

This is a classic post. Kids today or so oversheltered i am surprised they can chew gum and cross the street at the same time. i had no helmets or knee pads or any of that shit growing up, I had those tiny Fisher Price little people and wasn’t stupid enough to actually swallow one.

Preach it, Jon. Get those kids out there and injuring themselves! it’s called LIFE.

as jon’s sister, i can vouch for the zim-zam accident, putting things in my mouth or up my nose (crayons, cat food, peanuts…you figure you what went where), never being injured by dive sticks except for feeling like my head was going to explode in the deep end. i do wonder what huffy jon is referring to though…i had a huffy sweet thunder that all the boys loved to ride…is that the one…with the pink wheels that was light enough to do bunny hops….hmmm…that one was never stolen. it was supposed to be passed on to the next generation of dyers until our dad pawned if off to some kid in need or something….that bike was classic. though i am an advocate of bike helmets (as a bike commuter) the only injuries i ever got from riding a bike as a kid were on my knees. and i wish they made heelies for adults, although i think we’d really hurt ourselves.

The current generation of parents (mine) already got their kicks. They lit the small waste basket in their rooms on fire and quietly snuck glasses of water from the kitchen to extinguish. They sledded down 10-degree slopes into massive oak trees and laughed it off. They “launched” their bikes over homemade ramps (where did all that mysterious plywood come from anyways? My backyard had some sort of invisible wood-with-nails-sticking-out-of-it generator that would replenish out supply every summer. Strange…)

“Do as I say, not as I did”. Nostalgia has a way of romanticizing certain memories, making us believe that the only way we are still alive is by some form of divine intervention, or that we beat such unfathomable odds that our offspring are doomed to payback all that Karma…in blood.

If I ever have kids (unlikely), I already know the response I’ll give to “Dad, can we jump off the 3nd floor porch into the snow banks?”

I think I’m a few years younger than most of the people who have commented, but I can still appreciate most, if not all, of what’s been said.

I never wore a bicycle helmet, and continued the rebellion even after they passed a law in our state that required children under the age of 16 or something like that to wear helmets.

On one rare occasion that we actually had snow/ice one winter, I got an old rickety sled out, took it to a friends house, piled up some snow to create a ramp on one side of the road where a ditch was, started at the top of his driveway laying down on the sled face first, launched off the ramp and (mostly) cleared the ditch. It was awesome, but unfortunately the sled broke on the first launch, so we didn’t get another try.

Remember the playground equipment they used to have? The grid of metal that came out of the ground and created a small arch and went back into the ground? (I can provide a picture if necessary) I was walking across one and fell and busted my forehead open. I ended up not having to get stitches, but it was pretty close. Did I ever get on one again? You bet!

Some things you just have to experience to learn the lesson that’s waiting for you!

@Kirsten: The only bike injury I had was in my 20’s, and I went over the handlebars onto pavement at about 20-25 MPH. I broke my elbow, but my head never touched the ground thanks to the tuck and roll training of youth.

@yo sis: That sweet thunder was bad ass. I think there should be an all girl rock band named Sweet Thunder. I’d buy the album even if they sucked. And here’s a sweet Sweet Thunder pic for you.

@Professor Statik: Where did all the wood come from? And where did it go? Oh ninja stars. Did everyone have those things? Where the hell did we get those?

@Pablo: The green machine would’ve been referenced if I knew anyone who had one.

@Jaye: …but what am I so afraid of? I’m afraid that I’m not sure of [something something something]… I’ve added “No Blood, No Foul” to my “Heavy metal bands that I’d start had I Any Talent” list.

@n0ia: I want to say that our elementary school jungle gym was on concrete, but I don’t think that I can prove it.

@Erin: I didn’t actually listen directly. I just hacked into JOSHUA with my sweet haX0ring skills and downloaded the transcripts of your conversation. Then, I got the system to play tic-tac-toe with itself so that it couldn’t trace the call. Thanks for the material, and enjoy the BBQ!

I’m pretty sure my elementary school jungle gym had wood chips. That’s stabby. And I think should still be in practice! Seriously, what’s with all the padded and rubberized playgrounds? Kids should be out there breaking their arms and scabbing their knees up. If parents want their kids to be safe and sound, just put them in a bubble and roll ’em around. What doesn’t kill you makes you less of a pussy… or something like that. We’ll enjoy the BBQ AND the Jarts!

I love this subject and I’ve been saying the same thing for the last few years. I was born in the 70’s and did my growing up in the 80’s. I played cops & robbers and had a plastic green squirt gun and I remember running around shouting, “Bang, you’re dead” with my friends. Driving around in neighborhood I never see this anymore. Parents are not letting their kids play with guns but I bet they have an X-box in the house. So their fat-ass kids sit around inside and play games that have more graphic violence than some movies.
I also broke 2 wrists in different bike “incidents”! I survived and still have the scars from my skate boarding days. In the winter when my dad had to shovel snow off our flat roof, he would make sure the pile was just right and then we’d jump off, much to my mom’s disapproval! Good times and I’m sorry kids today won’t have such memories.

My personal bugbear is cars.
In the 70’s, (in the UK anyway), kids were taught, “The Green Cross Code”.
“Stop. Look. Listen.”, was drummed into our skulls until it stuck. And stick it did. I’ve never been struck down by a car. Ever.

Fast forward to today. Now we have ‘traffic calming’ measures, like speed bumps, 20mph speed restrictions in built up areas and patronizing adverts about how if you hit a kid at 40mph there is an 80% chance of them dying but if you hit them at 30mph they have an 80% chance of living. It would be a 100% chance of living if they’d been taught how to cross the fucking road safely in the first place, rather than me having to drive around town as fast as a retard on downers just in case some shit-blister with negligent parents runs out in front of me to get more candy to stuff into their pudgy faces whilst playing Resident Evil 6.5 on their PS3.

All childern aught to know how to remove a splinter from their finger with a pen knife by age 7. Fact!

Oh man, this article says it all. I’m probably younger than most of you guys, so I led a much more sheltered life (though not as much as kids nowadays.) I’ve always been jealous of the cool childhoods my grandma and dad tell me about. I think i missed out on so much, and, seriously, when I see the my little niece and nephew, I want to cry at the messed up childhood they’re getting.
I’ve always thought that when I have kids, I’ll give them free run. Maybe if my mom hadn’t babied me and my sister so much, I would have been more independant sooner, and wouldn’t have been such a perfectionist, or had such problems with social anxiety. Just generally more confident in my capabilities.
I say we all create a commune to raise our kids back-in-the-day style, without interference from modern pussy-making society. There’s lots of worse things than having to deal with a screaming kid ’cause they scraped their knee. Parents aren’t helping them, just softening them up, poor mother-truckers.

I came here from your beard quest page. (Awesome btw.) I was born in the early 80s, but I totally agree. Problem is, I’m also a parent, so I have to fight off all these things they’re trying to put on me and decide the ACTUAL safety of things.

As with previous posters I feel I must post my badges!
Skitched (that’s holding onto a moving car while on rollerblades/skates) on a van doing 40 and had to tuck and roll as it turned a sudden corner. Check.
Used a pile of scrap wood as a two man elevation device and received rusty nail in foot. Check.
Rode from West Texas to Ruidoso, New Mexico on the back dash of a car. Check.
Rode ON the couch in the back of the pickup to keep the COUCH from falling out. Check.
When it snowed mom got out the old breadsacks and rubber banded them over our shoes. We didn’t know ‘nonslip’. My son? He has these rubber galoshes that you could walk up a window with.

@Professor Statik – HellYeah Ninja Stars!

Also – Merry Go Rounds! Where have they taken them too? They’ve been uninstalled at every school ground I have found. We only ever saw ONE kid break a bone on ours growing up, and everyone knew it was because he was slow AND stupid. After all, that’s what the arched bars are for – locking your legs in so you can’t fall off in a crappy way when you’re not capable of jumping.

Okay..so I was born in the 80’s and missed alot of the 70’s fun. I totally agree with this article though.
I don’t think I ever wore a helmet when I rode my bike and the only thing I ever seriously hurt was my arm (although if I had been wearing protective wrist guards that might have been prevented……)
I remember riding big wheels down the giant hill in our subdivision as well as the rickety ramps that we rode anything that moved over. Playing street hockey in the middle of the street and having to move the goals every time a car came through.

I am a parent and pretty much unless my son comes to me screaming and crying, I figure he hasn’t been hurt too bad. My dad was always of the opinion that unless there is blood, it can’t be too bad. Granted both my brother and I have broken bones without blood, so that adage isn’t always true.

I just want to add that everything has become overly cautious and overprotected, not just children and their toys. Bags of charcoal HAVE the warning on them that it is dangerous to burn inside. Apparently Americans are not only stupid but completely lack in common sense since that is what most of these “warnings” are.

Ok, I’m a girl who grew up in Metro Detroit back in the 1970s and 80s.

Ahhh, I had a Huffy Sweet Thunder back in 1978. I LOVED that bike!! I grew up on a street with all boys, one had the boys Huffy Thunder, and I wanted one..so one day mom and dad came home with the Sweet Thunder for me!! :o) I rode it until I got upgraded to a Schwinn 10 speed boys Varsity when I was 13.

On our bikes we jumped curbs, pulled wagons on a string attached to our bikes. We jumped ramps made of wood. We played crash up derby with our big wheels.

We played outside until it was pitch dark, past the time the street lights came on..and our parents didn’t care! Ice cream trucks didn’t come out until it was dark back then..LOL

We had the Star Wars figures with the little swords and guns. All toys were small back then. And the mentioned Jarts, in which no one ever got impaled. We all had roller skates, we played with baseballs, bats, mitts in any piece of land we could find, not the little league total safety stuff, and NO helmets for anything.

Oh yea, and dare I mention, we were able to play TAG, or duck duck goose, etc….with contact?! There is a “no touch, no tolerance” rule nowadays. So Sad. What a bunch of antisocial, sociopath nation we are all making!! And an obese one too. No Exercise!!

Ah, and in the winter, my friends and I would clamp on to the old chrome car bumpers driving down the streets and slide behind them…and when they turned a corner, we would let go and slide into the curbs….such fun!!!

I had a school playground accident when I was 9 years old. We didn’t have mulch or any soft material on our playground, we had cement and pea pebbles. We did have the old merry go round until someone got hurt, then they took it out. We had the metal pipe type monkey bars, for some dumb reason we called on the boys and the other the girls, and a couple dome shaped ones. We had 4 sets of swings, and a couple sets of teeter tawters. Then came the one that I had my accident on: We had 2 big slides, to me, it seemed like they were 12 foot tall or more. My friends and I were playing “train” with a jump rope…and I wanted to be the “caboose”…well, when I got to the top, the others started going down, and I was pulled off from the top, onto the hard packed ground. I got hurt pretty bad, broken arm, and 8 stitches under my nose, and my face got all messed up. The hospital (my poor parents) thought I was abused by them, LOL…I can laugh now, but boy was my mom mad at the time, haha

We climbed trees, any tree we could get in to. One friend had one of those swings that you can still get from Little Tikes, it’s like a disk on a long string, and you attach it to a tall branch of a tree. Wow, that was fun. We would get her parents picnic table, and stack the seats, climb up onto them, and get on the swing, and try to go as high as we could!! I think sometimes we even got on a branch and get on it and swing from that, we were fearless!

We had snowball fights at school and at home, we played cops and robbers with toy guns with no orange tips, oh yea, and when I got to driving age, we did donuts in the high school parking lot … fun!!! We didn’t have school security back then, or metal dectectors either. We used to yell “JALOPY!!” to crappy cars that drove by, hahahaha or some kids threw snowballs at cars going by. ***GASP***

Well, I am a proud parent to a 13 yr old and a 4 yr old. I am proud to say that I kept some of my old fisher price little people toys from when I was little, or got some on Ebay. I have my old wooden puzzles, and a few other things that I used to love to play with growing up, my son even plays with some of my left over matchbox cars in which he has a ton added to them. It at least gives them something to use their IMAGINATION on. Yes, they do have the electronics stuff too, we have the Wii, my 13 yr old has to be with the times too. But, my 4 yr old. He has pedal tractors, he has bikes, big wheel, and any possible manual mode of transportation a kid could have, and plays with them all and uses his imagination while at it. What’s funny, he has no little friends to play with on our street, but he manages to crash into his other toys sitting around, hahaha And he plays with my old toys and guess what…he doesn’t even put them in his mouth, why? because I tell him not to. We play ball, he does have a bike helmet, it’s a local law, but in the yard, I don’t make him wear it. I have toy guns for him too, and I play with them with him. He’s got kid sized real tools, and we made him a work bench with a real metal vise. He has not managed to pinch his fingers yet, because I taught him not to. He hammers scrap pieces of wood, or clamps them to the vise and saws on it.
In winter time, we have snowball fights with each other too. Now, nowadays I think I would freak if my daughter did half of what I did, such as the car thing..but otherwise,

No, I’m not trying to raise my kids to be pussies…that’s for sure. I want them to live life and have fun while at it!! I want them to experience the fun that I had growing up! ;o) Or as close as possible.

It’s really getting sad with all this stuff to save us from ourselves. How the heck is Darwinism supposed to weed out the idiots if we protect them too much?

I grew up in the early 50’s where we had virtually no protection. I have never broken a bone and have no big scars, and am pretty healthy. We made our first skate boards with a 2×4 and metal skate wheels and rode them down a rather steep hill in the neighborhood. No one died or even got more that a little road rash.

OMG this is some funny shit! Brings back the memories for sure. Funny how we all managed to grow up just fine when we played with all kinds of dangerous stuff while unsupervised. My parents never had the slightest idea where we were or what we were doing for the entire day until the streetlights came on and they didn’t even worry for a minute about where we were. Sad that the sickos ruin it for kids these days, I mean i would be worried if 10 minutes went by and i didnt know where my 6 year old was. My brother and i used to play evil knievel and line kids up on the sidewalk to jump over them on our bikes and we did this strangely enough in front of the house and no parents ever came outside to tell us to stop. We burned stuff with matches, slid down giant dirt hills on big wheels, walked along the railroad tracks waiting for trains to squash the pennies we put on the tracks, played with jarts, stuck cherry bombs into model cars, oh geez i could go on and on. We trick or treated by ourselves all night long and ate the candy on the way home, swung out over the freeway by hanging onto the branches of a weeping willow tree, and just had a blast. Ah, the memories. Too bad kids today will never experience the childhood that we had as it is a bygone time. Things are different now with all the molesters and crime and it will never again be the same. Luckily for us we have amazing memories of our super amazing childhoods.